Walker Percy

Because of: The Moviegoer (National Book Award), Love in the Ruins, Lost in the Cosmos, many more.

Nationality: American

Catholicity: convert at about 30. Benedictine secular oblate.

Dante Alighieri

Because of: The Divine Comedy

Nationality: Italian

Catholicity: lifelong, observant

John Henry Newman

Because of: Sermons; Apologia Pro Vita Sua; The Idea of the University; Callista; The Dream of Gerontius; highly prolific author in several genres.

Nationality: English

Catholicity: convert from Anglicanism; eventually a Cardinal of the Catholic Church.

Margery Kempe

Because of: The Book of Margery Kempe (often called the first autobiography in English).

Nationality: English

Catholicity: lifelong; also a mystic.

Rumer Godden

Because of: In This House of Brede, Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy, The Diddakoi

Nationality: English

Catholicity: convert at age 61

George Bernanos

Because of: Diary of a Country Priest, Dialogues of the Carmelites, A Crime

Nationality: French

Catholic status: lifelong observant

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Because of: extraordinary poetry, including The Windhover, Felix Randall, Pied Beauty, The Grandeur of God.

The Sierra Club included his poetry in some of their early books based on the photography of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Catholic status: Catholic priest

Flannery O'Connor

Because of: The Violent Bear It Away, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Wise Blood.

National Book Award, 1972

Catholic status: observant throughout life.

Evelyn Waugh

Because of: Brideshead Revisited, Love Among the Ruins, The Loved One, A Handful of Dust.

Catholic status: convert, observant

Graham Greene

Because of: The Power and the Glory, The Third Man, Loser Takes All, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana.

Catholic status: Converted because his future wife insisted; probably partly insincere. Very checkered moral life with many mistresses and casual affairs. May have really come to the Faith late in life.

Sigrid Undset

Because of: Kristin Lavransdatter, The Master of Hestviken, Catherine of Siena. Nobel Prize for Literature, 1928.

Catholic status: convert from Lutheranism in 1924, observant for the rest of her life.

J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

Because of: The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, On Fairy-Tales (and much more)
Plus a lifetime of scholarship as a linguist.

The Lord of the Rings has been voted the best novel of the 20th century several times by readers around the world (though literary critics were horrified). Tolkien himself described the Ring trilogy as a work in which the Catholic viewpoint was strongly present but not overt.

Catholic status: Observant throughout life.